


There Is No Undoing This

by Stagcore



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, suicide mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-07 23:18:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19095040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stagcore/pseuds/Stagcore
Summary: So this is a fic I wrote and published a year ago but I then orphaned the account because it was awful but here's the new and improved version.Set after/during Dark Days





	There Is No Undoing This

_What people underestimated,_ Skulduggery thought to himself as he paced across the floor of one of his living rooms, _was how hard it was to repress things and no matter how hard you bury things under a calm facade, memories, emotions, and pain just spring back up when it is least convenient and leave you worst than before. And, well after the damage is done there is no going back. Not after a year, or ten years or a hundred years.. The misery, the pain, the hurt. It all comes back to you full force and there’s not much you can do to stop it. The waves drown and swallow you, leaving your breathless and scared. The damage was done and there was no undoing it but Skulduggery didn't mind that much. After all, where is the fun in that?_

Oh, but the great Skulduggery Pleasant was never scared. Angry? Yes. Cruel? Yes. Inhumane? At times but never _scared._

That's what he told himself when everything got too much. He wasn't scared. He was tired. God everything was too much and there is so escaping from it. No way to numb himself. Anybody else would sleep or drink or hell, probably kill themselves so that they didn't have to feel the amount of things he felt (but he tried his hardest to avoid the 'S' word.) 

In theory, Skulduggery could kill himself. He was already dead yes but his consciousness wouldn't leave his body unless his aura was broken down or his magic was displaced. But what then? An eternity of dark nothingness? Hell? People like him go to hell that much was for sure _(if hell truly existed and wasn't a sandy, hot, barren planet devoid of anything but old bones, withered stone and Avenging Gods)_

_No, I'm okay. I am absolutely fine thank you very much. I am not suicidal!_ (If he says it with enough conviction maybe that would change the ache he felt to just make everything stop) 

Rubbing a hand over his skull, he settled back into the old, used armchair and crossed his legs again. Focusing on meditation. Blocking everything else out until it was just him and the magic that kept his bones together… and Valkyrie who seemed to have dozed off on the sofa, drooling on one of the old purple cushions fast asleep like a cross between a cat and a drunk.

Drawing in a breath that he didn’t need (force of habit) he made himself sit still and focus The air around him buzzed pleasantly with the kinetic energy of the universe. Waiting to be manipulated and used. To the side of him he could hear Valkyrie turning over to face him, her short puffs of breath stirred the air and he hung onto it like a tether. Reminding him that he was still alive and as long as he was still alive there was the smallest speck of hope for him no matter how minute it was.

Seconds felt like an eternity adding to the pent up anger and frustration. No this wasn’t going to work, he was restless and anxious and he needed to do something!. There were still paper all over the floor from researching the latest case and a half eaten pepperoni pizza that Valkyrie had left declaring that she was going to eat it for breakfast tomorrow. The papers described how a high level sorcerer had been kidnapped from outside the sanctuary and it was their job to find him and so that the information he had didn’t get into the wrong hands, not to save his life or get him back home to his husband and child, so that the information did not get into the wrong hands. (And the elder's say _he_ is devoid of humanity (Behind his back of course, nobody said things like that to his face.) 

He paced the room like he could wear a hole from Ireland to the Australia purely by pacing and at this rate he didn’t rule out the possibility of it happening. Stranger things have happened in the last year...

“Skuldugg’ry” Valkyrie yawned and re-positioned herself so that her cushion was no longer slipping off of the sofa. “Go b'ck to m'ditating.” Her voice came out as a sleepy mumble. Skulduggery sat heavily on the sofa and tried again to focus on just his surroundings and not the nine months he spent being taken apart. 

Except the chair wasn’t a chair. It was yellow sand. Like everything had been obliterated and only the smallest grains of dust had survived. The hot sun beat down on his skull without his hat, starting to bleach the bones.

Agony erupts from his chest and suddenly he’s pleading. Pleading for the pain to stop, pleading for his wife and child’s life. Pleading for death.

Leaping from the armchair and stamping on the papers that littered the floor he curled up his fists and focused on what was around him. He was at home. Valkyrie was dozing on the sofa. It was still dark out. He was okay, he was okay, he was okay, he was okay, he was okay, he was okay...

 _Letting all the emotions back in was a mistake,_ he quickly decides. _Time to shove them back down again where they belong._

_But the anger still stays._ A voice he hadn't heard in hundreds of years speaks and there is no more words to describe how he feels anymore. He just wants to hurt. (Something that he can't admit to himself because that would make him crazy as well as dangerous. Who in their right mind would want to hurt themselves? The answer is someone who is tired of thinking and feeling and distracting themselves to do much else but make a desperate bid for something _more..._

Why didn’t he stay dead? Why did his family have to die? Why the fuck can’t he keep it together long enough to start to feel normal again?

“Skulduggery, stop!” Valkyrie said sitting up on the sofa, a blanket drapped round her shoulders, bringing him out of his reverie. His hands were still bundled up in a fist vibrating at his sides like he had one hundred volts running through his bones. He realised that he was heaving despite not needing oxygen. His rib cage expanding and contracting as if he still had lungs and a need for the air he is manipulating down where his throat would be if he was truly alive. “It’s just a bad dream, okay.” Valkyrie says soothingly. “You’re allowed to have bad dreams, remember. That’s what you told me.”

“Now come and sit down,” Valkyrie said. She wanted to reach out to him. To touch his hands but she wasn’t certain if that would make things worse. If her touch would ground her friend or if it would make him flinch and lash out. (Though Valkyrie knows he would never hurt her. Not intentionally.) 

Wordlessly he sat down in the arm chair besides the sofa that Valkyrie was sitting on and waited a few minutes before speaking. When she did finally speak she asked Skulduggery to uncurl the hand that was closest to her. Slowly he agreed and she carefully swirled her fingertips on the palm of him hands.

“Can you feel that?” Valkyrie asked, unsure if what she was doing was actually helping.”

“I can feel the air moving which is as close as I can get to what you’re trying to do.” She smiled at that and continued her movements.

“Do you want to talk about anything?” Valkyrie asked. Tilting his head, Skulduggery considered this for a moment and then shook his head. “No, It was just a bad dream, like you said.”  
“Are you sure? Because it’s okay to accept help” She said as she changed the direction of her hand. Going anti-clockwise this time she now included Skulduggery’s fingers. “I could text Ghastly?” She offered but he shook his head again.

“Go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Valkyrie said knowing that she won’t get anymore information out of him than that. “I’ll be here if you decide you do want to talk.”

“I know, thank you.”


End file.
